Cardiomyopathy Associated With Coronary Arteriosclerosis in Free-Ranging Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx carpathicus).

Marie-Pierre Ryser-Degiorgis,Mirjam Pewsner,Urs Breitenmoser,Andreas Ryser,Samoa Zürcher-Giovannini,Alan Kovacevic,Francesco C Origgi,Roman Kaspar Meier,Nadia Robert

doi:10.3389/fvets.2020.594952

Marie-Pierre Ryser-Degiorgis, Mirjam Pewsner + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.594952

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Abstract

The Eurasian lynx (subspecies Lynx lynx carpathicus) was reintroduced to Switzerland in the 1970's. Health monitoring of the reintroduced population started in the late 1980's. Since then, six lynx have been found affected by a myocardial disease. The earliest case was an animal that died after a field anesthesia. Two lynx were found dead, two were euthanized/culled because of disease signs, and one was hit by car. Two had a heart murmur at clinical examination. At necropsy, the first animal showed only lung edema but the other five had cardiomegaly associated with myocardial fibrosis. Three had multisystemic effusions. Histological examination of all six lynx showed mild to severe, multifocal, myocardial interstitial and perivascular fibrosis along with multifocal myocyte degeneration and loss, and replacement fibrosis. Moderate to severe multifocal arteriosclerosis with associated luminal stenosis of the small and medium-sized intramural coronary arteries and the presence of Anitschkow cells was also observed. The heart lesions may have led to sudden death in the first case and to a chronic right-sided heart failure in the remaining. None of the lynx showed lesions or signs suggestive of an acute or subacute infection. Given the common geographic origin of these animals and the severe loss of heterozygocity in this population, a genetic origin of the disease is hypothesized.

Highlights

Cardiovascular disease is considered the leading cause of mortality in people worldwide [1]
In both domestic animals and humans, the term cardiomyopathy has been long used to refer to idiopathic myocardial disorders, but cardiomyopathies were subsequently defined as clinicopathological entities resulting either from genetic anomalies or from nutritional deficiencies, with cardiomegaly and myocardial fibrosis as most typical features [13]
The pathological features consistent throughout the cases were the presence of myocardial fibrosis with associated Anitschkow cells, and coronary arteriosclerosis with intimal proliferation, which were pronounced in all lynx except case 2

Summary

Introduction

Cardiovascular disease is considered the leading cause of mortality in people worldwide [1]. Veterinary cardiologists have published a consensus document on the classification of cardiomyopathies in cats, in which they define cardiomyopathy as a “myocardial disorder in which the heart muscle is structurally and functionally abnormal in the absence of any other cardiovascular disease sufficient to cause the observed myocardial anomaly.” They recommend the further use of the formerly described four main forms of cardiomyopathies but to consider them different disease phenotypes rather than different disease forms [15]: [1] dilated (congestive) cardiomyopathy (DCM), characterized by enlargement and dilation of both atria and ventricles with normal or reduced ventricular wall thickness; [2] hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), typically featured by a wide phenotypic variability of left ventricular hypertrophy with reduced lumen size, increased absolute and relative heart weight, hypertrophic papillary muscles and stiff wall. Cases with overlapping features or not fitting well into any category can be referred to as unclassified cardiomyopathies or as cardiomyopathies with a non-specified phenotype [13, 15,16,17]

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